OBJECTIVE OF CARD BINGO: Be the first player to make a Bingo! by turning all your cards face down.
NUMBER OF PLAYERS: 2-10 players
MATERIALS FOR CARD BINGO: 2 standard 52-card decks
TYPE OF GAME: Card game
AUDIENCE: All ages
OVERVIEW OF CARD BINGO
Bingo is a popular game in which players have cards with random numbers and letters ( from B-I-N-G-O) on them. A caller calls out letter/number combinations. Then, the first player to fill up a row, column, or diagonal wins by calling Bingo!
However, did you know that you can also play with two decks of cards? Let’s go over the rules of how to play bingo with playing cards.
SET UP FOR CARD BINGO
Before you start the game, you first need to get everything set up. So, you need two decks of standard playing cards, a flat surface, and some friends. There can be up to 10 players and an additional payer to be the caller.
THE CALLER
The caller is the player who will be, yes, you guessed it, calling out the cards. They can also participate in the game if they want to, but it’s better if they are a spectator.
The caller will be calling out cards from the second deck after everyone has their cards. Then, this position can move left after each game.
DEALING
Now that you have your friends together, you need to choose a dealer. You can use any mechanism you want, but rock, paper, scissors always work well. The dealer will take one of the decks of cards and shuffle it.
The dealer deals out five cards to each player face up. If you have eight or fewer players, you can deal out six cards. Players can set them up how they want, but a grid is always a good idea so they can easily see all of their cards.
HOW TO PLAY
Everything is set up, and now you should be ready to play. Have the caller take the second deck of cards and shuffle it. He can place it in the center of the table for all the players to see.
One by one, the caller will flip the cards face up and call out the card. If you have a matching card, then you can take your card and flip it face down. This continues until someone has flipped all of their cards facedown.
END OF GAME
When you have flipped all of your cards, you can shout “Bingo,” and you will be the winner.
CARD BINGO VARIATIONS
You didn’t think that’s all there was did you? We’ve got a few fun variations you can add to make your Card Bingo game even more interesting.
THIRTEEN CARD BINGO
Adding more decks to the game allows for larger setups (or bingo cards) and/or more players.
BINGO WITH BETS
In this version of card bingo, you rank cards in a similar fashion as in Blackjack (and suits are ignored):
Face cards: 10 points
Aces: 11 points, 15 points, or 1 point
2-10 (number cards): face value
Firstly, players pay an ante. Players all get five cards face-down, and five are dealt to the table. Then, you flip the cards on the table one by one- these are the “common cards.”
The dealer can flip over the first common card, and if any of your cards match the common card, you can discard it. So the first player to discard all their cards wins the pot. However, if this does not occur, the winner is the one with the lowest card total in their hand according to the scheme described above.
You can play this with high-hand wins, low-hand wins, or Hi/Lo, where the highest hand and the lowest hand split the pot.
NO SUIT BINGO
You can ignore suits in basic card bingo. The caller can just call out “King,” for example. This variation speeds the game up and can be useful in games with a small number of players. Therefore, it is more common in this variation to have simultaneous winners.
ONLINE BINGO
Don’t have time to head to the Bingo hall? No worries! You can play Bingo online from the comfort of your home. There are tons of different online Bingo providers that offer a huge variety of different games. Here are a few solid online Bingo sites.
JACKPOT BINGO
You play this variation with two decks as well, with up to 4 players, and suits are ignored.
Prior to each deal, players place a single stake in the main pot and a double stake in the jackpot.
Then, after shuffling the decks together, the dealer deals each player six cards face-down and 12 cards face-down to the jackpot pile. These cards are dealt one at a time (two at a time to the jackpot pile) with betting rounds in between.
After that, the dealer exposes cards from the jackpot pile one at a time, calling out their rank. Like most variations of card bingo, players discard cards of equal rank as the card is called. If a player is able to discard all their cards and call “Bingo!” they receive the main pot and the jackpot.
However, if the jackpot is dry and no one has won, the dealer continues calling cards from the stock. Players discard cards of equal rank as before. If a player discards all their cards and calls “Bingo!” they only win the main pot. The jackpot remains and continues to grow until it is won.
In the event the pack runs dry, and there is no bingo, both pots remain, and a new hand is dealt.
Looking for more fun card games? Check out our two-player card games.
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